Just watch, Quigley tells NBN critics: We’re on track

news NBN Co chief executive Mike Quigley has laughed off criticism of the speed of the rollout of the National Broadband Network’s fibre deployment, confirming it is on track for its December target of 758,000 premises being constructed, and pointing out similar criticism levelled at the deployment of Australia’s first telephone networks in 1909.

Senior figures in the Coalition, as well as conservative media commentators have consistently criticised the NBN rollout over the past several years for the speed of its rollout. In one notable comment, Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull said in April this year that the rollout was happening “with the determination and velocity of an arthritic snail”. In August, when the Government released NBN Co’s new corporate plan, the company acknowledged it was six months behind schedule, due to factors such as the lengthy negotiation process involved in NBN Co’s multi-billion dollar deal with Telstra.

However, speaking at a lunch held by the Sydney Business Chamber last week, the man in charge of that rollout, Quigley, revealed NBN Co was on track to meet its target of 758,000 premises where construction of the company’s fibre network has commenced or been completed by the end of December. In the current six month period, the company has nearly doubled the number of premises where construction has commenced or been completed (from about 318,000 to just short of 600,000 at the end of October). Delimiter did not attend the lunch, but we have received notes on Quigley’s speech from NBN Co.

Separately, Quigley told the ABC in an interview on the sidelines of the lunch that although the project had taken some time to get off the ground, it was now starting to “hit its straps” in terms of rollout speed. “We’re feeling reasonably happy with the progress we’re making,” he said. “We’re aiming to finish the build of this network by mid-2021. That looks eminently doable and we’re quite happy with the way we’re progressing on costs. These kind of exaggerated claims you hear about huge delays and overruns really are not accurate.”

The Coalition does not view NBN Co’s measurement of premises where construction has completed or commenced as the correct measurement for the deployment of the NBN, preferring instead to focus on the actual number of concrete premises where construction has finished, or the number of active connections where Australians have actually taken up the NBN infrastructure. NBN Co itself sees the premises constructed or commenced figure as being more representative of total construction activity across its network.

However, Quigley also made the point in the lunch last week that those concrete numbers – activations and premises passed – would start to look very large in the June quarter of 2013, due to the fact that by that stage hundreds of thousands of premises would have been fully constructed – meaning that hundreds of thousands of Australians will have the chance to connect to the NBN with an active service. NBN Co’s corporate plan (PDF) forecasts that in mid-2013, it will have some 44,000 customers on new NBN fibre infrastructure, for instance – and a further 38,000 on wireless and satellite networks, plus 10,000 or so on fibre greenfields infrastructure.

Lastly, Quigley also told the audience that complaints and controversy – which have dogged the NBN project from the start – were nothing new when it came to these kinds of projects. The NBN chief quoted a letter published in the Brisbane Courier newspaper in April 1909, which referred to the deployment of telephone infrastructure by the government at that stage. By a concerned citizen who labelled themselves ‘“Engaged Pro Bono Publico’, it stated:

“Sir, in my opinion there is only one way to rule out the question of excessive and prohibitive increases to the cost of the telephone, and that is to convene a public meeting to arrange to employ messengers instead of telephones. Enormous amounts of money have been foolishly spent by the department, and naturally, they want us to foot the bill.”

opinion/analysis
Most who follow the NBN debate know that the project is currently engaged in a race against time. If it can deploy substantial sections of its infrastructure by the time the next Federal Election comes around, it seems likely that a Coalition Government would need to proceed with the project as a whole, or at least maintain much of its premise and goals intact. However, if NBN Co is too slow and its rollout only hits a small fragment of the population, a Coalition Government would have plenty of evidence to claim that the project had not delivered and should be canned or heavily modified.

Right now, evidence is growing that the project is delivering. NBN Co’s contractors certainly seem pretty confident that the construction goals for the initiative are not overly ambitious, and now we have new evidence from Quigley himself that the project is on track to meet the revised targets it set earlier this year. To many, perhaps most in Australia’s telecommunications industry, this will be welcome news, showing that this is a viable initiative by the Federal Government and that all the planning and debate which has been carried out on the NBN so far will not go to waste.

However, personally I still believe Malcolm Turnbull is correct and that the only figures which really matter for the NBN are the ones referring to premises completed and active services. Those are the real benchmarks for how we measure the NBN; and I won’t feel completely comfortable about the project’s long-term future until both number more than half a million (to pick a big number out of a hat).

“)Personally I still believe Malcolm Turnbull is correct and that the only figures which really matter for the NBN are the ones referring to premises completed and active services. Those are the real benchmarks for how we measure the NBN”‘

Did you forget that once an area is completed within 18 months the copper will be shut off? the take up rate will be close to 95% as people on copper will be forced onto the NBN. I know you like diplomacy, but running after the number of active services is pointless.

Regardless, its still a valid argument. Its great giving us the information for houses where construction has begun but that number is largely irrelevant and is used so the Libs can’t properly compare it to the last plan.

Also, NBNco is only predicting a 75% takeup rate. Apparently 12.5% of properties are vacant or have no internet connection and 12.5% will opt for wireless connections instead. Personally I don’t think the wireless number would be that high and NBN take up will be higher (much greater than 80%) but best to be conservative.

I disagree, I think the number of premises where construction has commenced or completed is a key indicator of progress in this project.

You don’t judge progress while you’re building a bridge by the number of cars that drive across it, and you don’t judge progress in building an airport by the number of departing flights. If you want to know how things are progressing before you’ve finished, you need to look at indicators other than the end result.

In your opinion section where you have stated your belief:
“that the only figures which really matter for the NBN are the ones referring to premises completed and active services.”
And that:
“Those are the real benchmarks for how we measure the NBN”

Regarding the “premises completed/connected/active” metric, do you agree that this metric is not at all an accurate or fair method to be used when measuring Greenfield sites?

If one were to apply the “premises completed/connected/active” metric to Greenfields, the take-up/connected/activation rate could well stand at 0% for many, many months due to no fault of NBN Co or their subcontractors, even though the area has been deemed “Ready For Service”.

Due to the aforementioned common situation where a new development can have fibre ready to go in all streets and be deemed “Ready For Service”, when the houses have not yet even started construction and could not possibly have active services until construction has been completed, 7-10 months allowing for construction time, after the area has been deemed “Ready For Service”.

As a complementary question to the above, do you agree that Greenfield sites are, in fact, much more accurately measured by the “premises passed” metric?

“However, personally I still believe Malcolm Turnbull is correct and that the only figures which really matter for the NBN are the ones referring to premises completed and active services. ”

Why?

NBNco is engaged in the enterprise of rolling out infrastructure… the metric of completed and active services is a delayed subset of such. It may be an important metric… but the only one?

In terms of political battle… again it’s not the only metric. Being able to say that you’ve got 100k connections and oh, these X Million [6000×365 = 2Mn premises, say 5Mn Australians] will be done within the year is also a pretty powerful metric when it comes to selling the project to the public.

For someone constructing the network, the two figures most important would be number of premises started and number of premises completed.
For someone providing services over the network and the one holding the bank book, the figure most important would be the number of active services.

In terms of cost or more accurately ROI (which justifies the cost), the numbers important are those important to the one holding the bank book.
But in terms of “roll out” speed (which is what’s being commented on here) then the numbers important are the same as those important to the one constructing the network.

So you can’t just say “the only figures which really matter for the NBN are…” since the scope of that (the NBN) is much larger than the things being commented on here (the rollout).

If you’re talking about the end result of the NBN, that consumers (i.e. we) are on the service, then sure, the two numbers you specify are important: completion (i.e. the opportunity to use the service) and active services (i.e. actually using the service).

But I would argue that the latter (active services) has little to do with the /roll out/ speed, and the former (premises completed) is simply the same as “premises started”, offset by a few months.

So in conclusion, for the NBN /roll out/ it is irrelevant whether you use “premises started” or “premises completed”. The only reason to use “premises started” over “premises completed” is if you want to be optimistic, while the only reason to use “premises completed” over “premises started” is if you want to be pessimistic. Given that it is in the nature of the Opposition to be openly pessimistic about the incumbent Government’s policies, and for any business government or otherwise to be publicly optimistic about its own activities, then it’s really just business as usual. At this point, it’s just preference. Pessimism or optimism, opposition or support?

With regards to the metrics of premises Ready for Service and premises actually connected, I’m of the opinion that neither could be considered exclusively accurate.

Both are equally important, the Ready for Service ones can be considered potential customers, and the actually serviced ones the customers.

As already stated, once the copper is disconnected the potential customers that transition into actual customers are very important, but until such time as this occurs, there’s really no single defining metric you can use to indicate the “completeness” of the NBN in these areas.

As Turnbull has pointed out, NBN Co has never said what ‘premises completed or commenced’ actually means … it could mean that someone has parked a truck in a street and put up some witches hats. Until NBN Co defines this more precisely, I will personally consider this statistic to be quite meaningless.

“As Turnbull has pointed out, NBN Co has never said what ‘premises completed or commenced’ actually means … ”

Excuse me? Who are you and where is Renai?

“Contract instructions have been issued together with the initial Network Design
Document (NDD) so that construction partners can commence work on the
detailed design, field inspections and rodding / roping activities in an FSAM. This
is followed by the release of a rollout map for the FSAM on the NBN Co web site
showing the coverage area for that FSAM and the estimated number of premises
to be passed / covered. ”

The Renai I know is for rationale fact based discussion, not pretending to be unbiased by agreeing with both sides. Repeatedly you’ve been ignoring the facts – the lack of a LNP policy, the actual policy ALP had in 2007 and of course claims like this one. WTF aren’t you double checking both your own and Turnbulls statements?

The Renai I know is for rationale fact based discussion, not pretending to be unbiased by agreeing with both sides.

Unfortunately, Renai’s editorial policy quite regularly oscillates between being fully supportive of FTTP and openly debunking Coalition’s FUD statements on one hand, and on the other clutching at straws trying to present Turnbull’s comments as “policies” having “merit” or being a “credible alternative”. Nothing like a bit of controversy to drive traffic to the site, eh? ;)

I agree. Number of premises commenced might be of interest to some but it’s too vague to mean much. Number of premises ‘ready for service’ is the number I’m most interested in as far as construction goes. I would suggest that spending and revenue measured against the corporate plan are a bit important too.

It’s incredible that Renai is so biased and always flip/flops between one side and the other. It’s like he can’t make up his mind which policy is 100% the only one and holy policy which is the only perfect one. Can’t he get it straight in his head? Why doesn’t he just pick a side? What a loser. *sigh*

At least Malcolm is willing to defer to the PC to decide his policy, hopefully he gives it wide guidelines to run under and not “this is how I want it, figure out the best way to make it happen”…and that they leave the current roll-out running while the PC decides.

But seriously, he is on record as saying the PC can decide it, so he may have left himself an “out” in case he wants to actually continue with the full fibre roll-out (don’t forget, he’s put his own money in to FttH OS, and it was Tony that charged him with his current anti-NBN crusade, it wasn’t his own choice). I suspect the PC would lean towards FttH (being non-political, they’d be more inclined to see it like the “techies” do), though the percentage of where that would run to may be different to the current percentage mix for fibre/wireless/satellite.

The other side has a lot of merit too:
Has he answered questions on coverage? No.
Does he have the support of his party? Who knows? They contradict what he says regularly.
Has he done any costings? No.
Will he answer the hard or even slightly difficult questions? He either ignores them or dances around them.
Would you buy a bridge from this man? Hell no.

You are too focused on the details of Turnbull’s “rough plan”. It is the quantity of his statements and his flair with the English language that count, not the fact that those details are inconsistent and contradictory. ;)

What I object to is people who seem to feel I should switch off my brain and believe that one side of politics is always, 100% of the time, wrong on everything. That simply isn’t true … and I’ve been around long enough, and through enough government administrations, to know that it doesn’t take much time before the shoe is on the other foot …

That’s not it at all Renai, most of us here aren’t terribly fond of the current Gov but the one thing keeping us from voting for the other lot is the NBN.

Frankly you are waaaaaay too optimistic and diploatic when discussing MT’s “ideas”, calling then a plan really does the word “plan” a serious injustice. We know for a fact that MT’s plan is “his” plan and not the liberal parties plan – if it where the parties plan Hockey and Abbott et al wouldn’t be out there contradicting everything he says the Libs will do with the NBN if they gain power!

In no way did Conroy detail his proposal anywhere near to the level that Turnbull has to date.

I am rapidly losing patience with your posts in particular. It’s OK to say something like “I don’t believe the Coalition have sufficiently detailed their rival policy”, or “I don’t agree with Renai’s argument that blah”. But the minute you start attacking me personally instead of the argument, accusing me of peddling “BS” and so on, is the minute you earn being banned from Delimiter for a week at least.

I studied Labor’s policy documents before 2007. Yes there was not a lot of detail. But what there was made it clear what their actions would be. Namely a process. Even then I could see that it was questionable whether anyone could come up with a proposal that would survive the 600 pound gorilla but at least we had something that could actually be called a plan. I actually liked it because even then I could see the real possibility of the government concluding they needed to build from scratch.

Turnbull’s musings though they make consume a lot of paper if printed out (I never do this) are full of words that would make weasels sue for defamation. About the only thing concrete he has actually said “I would definitely do” is to have some kind of study.

Indeed, you would expect more detail because whilst Labor proposed a process, Turnbull is (if you can believe the gist of his rantings) proposing a radical redesign. That demands hard core detail – timeline and process – and none is forthcoming. Mere bluster and warm and fuzziness does not count.

The other problem here Renai, is the credibility gap.

Labor proposed something that was at least believable in the sense that you could see it going ahead and completing in a year or two.

Turnbull (again, I’m having to bite my tounge at this) were he to do anything like what he proposes, would be embarking on a torturous, 2 to 3 year process.

Again, Renai, what I’d like you to do is to write an article about the process that would be involved in the unlikely event that a Liberal government were to do a redesign.. come on, you know it’ll be fun :)

Then when you’ve thought about it for a while, then looked back on Turnbull’s words, you’ll understand the full meaning of “credibility gap”.

Well, to be fair, it isn’t just the NBN. I think it’d just be genuinely concerning (God help us all) to have Tony Abbott as prime minister. I don’t think Julia is a very effective or likeable prime minister, but Tony seems like pure evil.

“What I object to is people who seem to feel I should switch off my brain and believe that one side of politics is always, 100% of the time, wrong on everything”.

No, that is just a straw man argument response to very valid criticism. You always conflate a preference for what is a very solid NBN policy (which happens to be a Labor policy) with unconditional support of the Labor party on all things. This is simply not what many people here are arguing here.

“”You always conflate a preference for what is a very solid NBN policy (which happens to be a Labor policy) with unconditional support of the Labor party on all things.”

*stares* um ….. when have I ever done that???”

Yeah when has Renai ever done that?

I mean, it’s not like he ever said:

“I think many people who read Delimiter would not be satisfied until I spent all my time slamming the Coalition and praising Labor. Frankly, I would prefer it if such people, who have obvious biases one way or the other, not read Delimiter.”

“Nowhere in there is there a conflation between support for the NBN and support for all things Labor.”

Correct.

You did not respond to a question about the rationale and fact based reporting of the coalition policy with a statement about how you “think [that] many people who read Delimiter would not be satisfied until I spent all my time slamming the Coalition and praising Labor. ” [Emphasis added].

FYI you have been banned from Delimiter for a week. Your latest comment was intensely sarcastic and I personally found it quite rude. It also attacked me personally. All of this is against our comments policy:

Renai said: “It’s incredible that Renai is so biased and always flip/flops between one side and the other. It’s like he can’t make up his mind which policy is 100% the only one and holy policy which is the only perfect one. Can’t he get it straight in his head? Why doesn’t he just pick a side? What a loser. *sigh*”

Don’t sweat it Renai, you know what those NBN fanbois are like :o)

While “commenced” numbers are kinda interesting (along with “take-up”), but the only real numbers I’m actively interested in are those where a building has the “plumbing” done to where it can connect if the owner wants it. That’s the real “where the rubber meets the road” numbers IMHO.

Is that a picture of Mike rolling out some fibre? The “I can’t believe they’re making me do this” look on the worker guy makes me inclined to think it is…

I do love that comic, and it is an excellent expression of all things content on the Internet … but it’s not really that applicable here. Journalism is not art; it does not require that much creativity, and it’s not like there’s anything new to see here.

It’s pretty much the rule on every Internet publication that I know of: Criticise the argument, fine. Criticise the author and accuse them of bias or of manufacturing controversy? You get banned. Strangely, this is a rule that holds in real life as well ;)

Its hardly anything to be proud of that the takeup rate will only come up to anything even remotely approaching a commercially viable level thanks to the government using $11B of taxpayers money to shut down the existing copper. Any real business that engaged in that sort of behaviour would be branded as criminally anti-competitive. And criminally wasteful.

I suspect a lot of you are going to be more than a little bit unhappy when you see how many people say “you’re going to cut off my fixed-line home phone? … ok, go ahead, I need my mobile phone and mobile internet access, but I don’t really need a ‘home’ phone any longer.”

“However, personally I still believe Malcolm Turnbull is correct and that the only figures which really matter for the NBN are the ones referring to premises completed and active services.”

At the end of the day of course, only real connections and real customers count.

The problem for NBNco of course is the focus on rolling out the network to greenfield estates means that most of the work is being done where there are not as yet real connections to be made because the houses are yet to be built.
This means that most of the premisis passed won’t become premisis connected for about a year after the rollout in their estate.

The biggest problem with the debate on the NBN is that it has become politicised. As usual the first casualty is the truth.

The bare fact is that to call the coalition a plan or a policy is showing a huge amount of charity.

Imagine a salesman telling you that their product is better, cheaper, andcan be delivered quicker than the competition but you will have to buy the product before the salesman can give you any more details.

If you are hesitant, he tells you that the savings could be two third of the cost but before he can commit himself he would have to talk to the owner the premises where the product will be manufactured, to see how much rent he will charge, before he can give you a firm price.

However, he is quite confident that the negotiation will result in a cheaper price and won’t delay the delivery.

Would you buy from him? Would call this a good business proposition or plan?

NBNCo is not a service provider to the end customer – so why would NBNCo’s rollout be benchmarked and judged on the active connections of end clients when servicing end clients is the responsibility of the RSPs…

NBNCo rolls out the infrastructure for the NBN, and as such, the only benchmark relating to the rollout of said infrastructure is how much of that infrastructure they have rolled out and whether it is meeting their stated goals.

Exactly, to use the roads analogy.
NBN is building the National roadnetwork, from freeways, feeders, major, minor and residential road past the homes and businesses and the kerbing to the driveway of the premises, the isp’s now just have to sell the cars to the occupants. Some will prefer shank’s pony or their pushbike or motorbike.
Whatever, NBN has done it’s job once the roads are built

This is a national project that needs to be respected and the Coalition & Media has no fault of their own ti dis the project like they have been doing for since 2007 When Labor was elected.

Coalition had Howard years to try and figure out a policy that would work under their rule – but refused to do anything – now they are coming back and dissing everyone who is associated with the project – regardless if they are innocent or not.

It is Labor’s turn to see if the can complete what Coalition could do not – and I think it’s about time that everyone stop playing politics over our economies future as well as our children.

The problem we have is a political party adopting Republican tactics of spin, distort and lie on every single number they get their hands on.

The figures regarding completed and active connections are important. The problem is they are also the easiest to use dishonestly.

And the activation figures alone don’t tell the whole story.

What you need to find out, and report, is the time series percentage activations broken down per FSA (or group of FSAs if they are activated together).

Then then gives you some manner of predictive ability and some insight as to take up behavior.

Activation figures that are agglomerated across older and newer activations simply make it harder to see the real trends, and also tend to do NBNco a disservice since this is also the easiest set of figures for the Liberals to lie (oops soory, distort and misrepresent) about.

I hope you have a chat with NBNco and get some more detailed numbers. That would be great :)

But then again you do not want to see it suceed anyway. It will get harder and harder to use statistics based around the Telstra deal delay and counting the years during the trial to try and hoodwink the public into believing the rollout is slow.

The point is, even when they were credible they never had any significant electoral support. Never managed to win a seat in the Lower House, and lost almost all of the support they had (as low as it was) with a single political “mistake” (as seen by general public, i.e. the support of Howard’s GST.)

There just doesn’t seem to be a “market” for centrist, rational, evidence-based politics in this country.

I will admit I was a Democrat voter – Don Chipp was worth the vote, they lost me when they went against their no GST platform (they had s record vote that year) Don Chipp would not have sold out , Meg Lees did

“Meanwhile BT itself is busy deploying about 30,000 FTTC street cabinets, which should bring superfast broadband speeds of up to 80Mbps (Megabits per second) to 66% of the UK by Spring 2014 (passing 19 million premises).”

NBN is a cash cow and some people at NBN know that. There are some people at top level at NBN that have secondary agenda. They have mates working for each other. Qui
Federal Government is equally bad. . Coalition should stop NBN immidiately. I don’t any probem with my current internet with Optus. I have problems when I go to an emergency, when I have to wait for hours. Spend money where it is need the most. Quigley seems to be a good bloke but I am afraid he is surrounded by a bad team.Thanks J

“There are some people at top level at NBN that have secondary agenda”
“but I am afraid he is surrounded by a bad team”
Do you have any evidence for this at all?

“I have problems when I go to an emergency, when I have to wait for hours”
You do realise the cost of the NBN isn’t from tax and is only a tiny fraction of what is spent on health? Stopping the NBN would not improve health, if anything since they are trying to reduce health care costs by using the NBN it would make it worse.

How ridiculous does Quiqley look now, just 3 months later, after saying “we’re on track” that the NBN isn’t on track and is significantly behind in its forecasts. More lies which is understandable given the Labor government behind the project.

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